flexible keyboard rolls up like a sheet of paper

By Jonathan Fincher
December 11, 2012

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The Qii is a thin, flexible keyboard that connects wirelessly to smart devices and rolls up into a portable case about the size of a roll of coins
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Keyboards have come a long way from the plastic dust traps of yesteryear. In just the past few months, we've seen virtual keyboards that project onto any surface and gloves that let users "type" in thin air. Now a handful of inventors have created the Qii, a thin, flexible keyboard that connects wirelessly to smart devices and rolls up into a portable case that fits in your pocket.

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There have been a few keyboards that could be rolled up in the past, but these still only shrunk to the size of a magazine, which is still a bit bulky. When it's stored away, the Qii (pronounced key) is about as big as a roll of coins, but can be pulled out easily like a tape measure and laid over almost any surface to type on.
With a corresponding app, the keyboard connects to supported smart devices over Bluetooth. The full QWERTY keyboard also has a textured surface for easier touch typing and an anti-fingerprint coating that can be washed with just soap and water. To top it all off, the case itself is a touchpad that lets users scroll through and select items onscreen.
Over a period of several years, the team behind the bendable keyboard developed a technique for printing programmable touch sensors onto a new carbon-based nanomaterial that can conduct electricity. The result was a transparent film that can be programmed to detect the force and position of a finger touching it. Surprisingly, the flexibility of this film also enhances the keyboard's resilience. Since all the electronic components are printed flat and made of water and dirt resistant materials, the keyboard can survive drink spills and even being hit with a hammer.

There are plenty of possibilities for an ultra-thin wireless touch sensor, and the designers hope this will be the first of many products to use the technology. The Qii's electronics are built into a bendable plastic for now, but with future development, similar electronic components could be printed on a smaller scale and onto almost any material, even paper. And since it's completely programmable, different apps could yield wildly different uses for the material aside from a QWERTY keyboard.
The makers of the Qii are currently running an Indiegogo campaign to finalize the product and bring it to full production, but there's still plenty of testing and design work left to finish, particularly with getting all the components to fit inside the case properly. As of this writing, there's less than 30 days left for it to reach its US$1,850,000 goal with just over $9,000 in contributions, which doesn't seem like a good sign unfortunately.

You can still reserve your own Qii in a variety of colors for donations starting at US$120 however, with delivery expected for October 2013, provided the Indiegogo campaign reaches it's target. Certain contributors who donate a significant amount will also have the chance to work with the team to program the material with their own custom functions.
Check out the video below to see how the Qii rolls out onto any surface to act as a working keyboard almost anywhere

DARPA foam fights internal bleeding

By David Szondy
December 11, 2012

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Animation still of the DARPA foam being injected
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a foam that can be injected into the body cavities of battlefield wounded to protect them from internal abdominal bleeding. The agency hopes that when perfected, the foam will help the wounded to survive the critical minutes needed to transport them to proper surgical facilities for treatment.
Developed by Arsenal Medical, Inc. as part of DARPA’s Wound Stasis program, the product is a polyurethane polymer foam designed to control internal hemorrhaging for at least an hour and is designed to be easy for doctors and surgeons to remove.
The “Golden Hour” is the 60 minutes when initial treatment of battlefield casualties means the probable difference between life and death. Abdominal injuries are particularly dangerous during this time because they can’t be treated with compression pads or tourniquets. This means that internal bleeding is a real threat to survival before proper facilities can be reached.
The polymer foam is intended to be injected into the abdominal cavity by a field medic in two liquid phases – a polyol phase and an isocyanate phase. When the liquids combine, they react and expand to 30 times their original volume – a bit like foam thermal insulation. As the foam expands, it fills the intact abdominal cavity and hardens into a dressing that molds itself to the internal organs and resists blood loss. Removing the foam is also remarkably easy. In tests, it showed little signs of sticking to tissues and surgeons were able to remove it in a solid block in less than a minute.

No human tests have been conducted, but work has been done with test swine injuries. Preclinical data presented by project members at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma in Kauai, Hawaii showed that the foam raised survival rates for liver injuries after three hours from 8 to 72 percent, while reducing blood loss six fold.
Arsenal Medical is currently working on Phase II of the project under a US$15.5 million contract from DARPA. Meanwhile, the agency is hoping for clinical trials.
“If testing bears out, the foam technology could affect up to 50 percent of potentially survivable battlefield wounds," says DARPA program manager Brian Holloway. "We look forward to working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on future regulatory submission of this device, and with our partners, the Army Institute of Surgical Research and Special Operations Command, on getting this technology to where it’s desperately needed on the front lines.”
The animation below shows the foam in action.
Source: DARPA

World's most anatomically correct musculoskeletal robot is presented in Japan

By Jason Falconer
December 12, 2012

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The University of Tokyo's JSK Lab have developed what could be considered the world's most anatomically correct robot, Kenshiro
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Most human-like robots don't even attempt biological accuracy, because replicating every muscle in the body isn't necessary for a functional humanoid. Even biomimetic robots based on animals don't attempt to replicate every anatomical detail of the animals they imitate, because that would needlessly complicate things. That said, there is much to be learned from how muscle groups move and interact with the skeleton, which is why a team at Tokyo University's JSK Lab has developed what could be considered the world's most anatomically correct robot to date.

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Researchers there have been developing increasingly complex musculoskeletal robots for more than a decade. Their first robot, Kenta, was built in 2001, followed by Kotaro in 2005, Kojiro in 2007, and Kenzoh (an upper-body only robot) in 2010. Their latest robot, Kenshiro, was presented at the annual Humanoids conference this month.
It models the average 12 year-old Japanese boy, standing 158 cm (5 feet, 2 inches) tall and weighing 50 kg (110 pounds). According to Yuto Nakanishi, the project leader, keeping the robot's weight down was a difficult balancing act. Nonetheless, the team managed to create muscles which reproduce nearly the same joint torque as real muscles, and that are roughly five times more powerful than Kojiro's.

Muscle and bone

Its artificial muscles – which are a bit like pulleys – replicate 160 major muscles: each leg has 25, each shoulder has 6, the torso has 76, and the neck has 22. Most of these muscles are redundant to Kenshiro's actual degrees of freedom (64), which is why other humanoids don't bother with them. By way of comparison, mechanical robots like Samsung's Roboray typically have just six servos per leg, and often don't contain any in the torso/spine (the human body actually contains around 650 muscles).

A detailed look at Kenshiro's knee joint, which contains artificial ligaments and a floating patella

Equally important to the muscles is Kenshiro's bone structure. Unlike its predecessors, Kenshiro's skeleton was made out of aluminum, which is less likely to break under stress compared to plastic. Also, its knee joints contain artificial ligaments and a patella to better imitate the real thing. These are just some of the details considered in its construction, which far surpasses the work done on the upper-torso Eccerobot cyclops, whose creators claimed it to be the world's most anatomically accurate robot a few years ago.
As you'll see in the following video, programming all of those muscles to work in tandem is proving a difficult task – a bit like playing QWOP multiplied by about a hundred. The robot is able to perform relatively simple tasks, like bending its arms and legs, but more complex actions such as walking remain primitive. However, the team has made significant strides over the years, and with Kenshiro they continue to push the limits of musculoskeletal robots further.
Source: Tokyo University JSK Lab via IEEE Spectrum